page 5: C6/C7- Win8 Pro and Seasonic X560 used here aren't listed in the 1150 test setup on pg 3. - Do you need Win8 for C6/C7 to work? If so, might be good to be definative about it rather than just saying Win8 is designed more efficiently in this regard.

I would be interested in seeing some numbers on thermal performance. This is one area that really concerns me with Haswell, and hasn't gotten a lot of discussion so far in the reviews on most major sites (Anandtech, Tom's Hardware, etc.) Some sites discuss how thermal limits put a ceiling on overclocking, but so far the only discussion I've seen of thermal performance at stock speeds is on Legit Reviews, which found that the i7-4770K maxed out at a whopping 82 degrees C when using the stock cooler. I wonder how long the chip will last at those temperatures. Even if the wattage used appears to be lower, the increased thermal dissipation compared to Sandy Bridge and Ivy Bridge could be a serious problem for someone trying to design a silent system.

AFAIK, Haswell does seem to run hotter at load, if you can trust the accuracy of the thermal sensor in the CPU, and according to chats I've had with heatsink and other hardware makers in Taipei at Computex last week -- all of whom are referring to the readout of the internal CPU sensor, of course.

We can certainly run the kind of stress testing we do for heatsink tests, but unfortunately there's no definitive way to thermally compare a Haswell to an Ivy Bridge -- incompatible sockets & motherboards. About the closest we can get to a true A/B test for temperature differences between CPUs of different sockets is to use the same HSF and the same fan speeds with the same loads... and measure the temp of the base of the heatsink using our infrared temp sensor. It'd be better with a surface-embedded thermocouple (on the top of the CPU casing or the bottom of the heatsink base), but that's a lot of work.

If there's a big enough call, we'll do something...

...but the flip side is that if you're running a silent rig, you're most likely using a big powerful cooler with a fan that's set to keep the CPU temp below a certain temp (let's say silent below 60, and always keep it below 70C). This is pretty easy with most motherboard fan controllers these days, so the question of longevity seems moot -- you'll upgrade to a new platform long before you have a chance to burn out the CPU.

And if you're a typical overclocker, you'll probably obsess about keeping the CPU temp way below such temps anyway, so...

Fair enough, though i am starting to question the road both Intel and AMD are heading down with there push to SOC (system on chip)We are always told its faster for the Northbridge, Southbridge, Memory controller, integrating GPUs, and now the VRM's to be brought into the chip.But im starting to question the cost in thermal load of all these extras, especially when we are faced with the ever decreasing surface area of the CPU.

Wear rubber gloves. (You might also wear an anti-static band and attach theother end to a ground.)

Held facing the silver surface with the notches at the top, the CPU inside isvertical in the center with the VRM along the left side of that. Over a softsurface, carefully cut the corners first then cut the sides--cut the left sidelast to avoid the area of the VRM--till you remove the lid.

Use Indigo Xtreme Clean to remove the TIM (thermal interface material) fromover the CPU on both pieces. You don't have to remove the black glue around theedges.

Replace the TIM with Coollaboratory Liquid PRO with the syringe it comes in.Put a tiny drop on the center of the CPU and spread it with a scalpel avoidingthe VRM. Leave a thin even film over the CPU. Replace the lid.

I really don't care about a comparision to IVB. My concern about thermals revolves around one basic thing:

How big/expensive of a cooler do I need to strap onto that stock CPU in order to maintain an SPCR level of silence at a tolerable temperature?

We know how well a variety of coolers respond with older CPUs. What we don't know is how that translates to Haswell with it's combination of higher power density and inferior IHS attachment. Maybe you could grab a few best-in-class coolers (using the reference fan) and use existing load tests on one mobo. I will throw this out there knowing that it's a beast of many parts...and that it could be trimmed down a lot. Here's the rough take.

Coolers: - stock Intel cooler (I'd like to see this added to the cooler testing for a baseline)- low profile for tiny case builds - top down for limited height builds- 120mm tower- 140mm tower

Hopefully, you'll get an Asus mobo in so you can use Fan Xpert to set fixed fan rpm...or Speedfan or whatever. By setting the fan to a fixed rpm, we can do a direct compare to the published cooler review and plot Haswell temps at given loads vs the cooler review results.

This does add yet another test variable - fan RPM. Oops. Probably need to test each load at a couple of the published RPM levels for the reference fans. Like I said earlier, a beast of many parts.

Temp measurements: How is Haswell temp sensing easier or harder than what's done for the cooler reviews? Is it that Realtemp/Speedfan aren't updated for Haswell? Is that the internal chip temp sensors aren't the most accurate things in the world (I've heard 5%)?

In the end, it would be great to have an idea on how much cooler is needed for a specific build. Maybe my bucket list can be pared down to a reasonable test set. I'd be glad to help with presentation graph-fu.

I really don't care about a comparision to IVB. My concern about thermals revolves around one basic thing:

How big/expensive of a cooler do I need to strap onto that stock CPU in order to maintain an SPCR level of silence at a tolerable temperature?

Until further test are done the best comparison we have is with IVB, and from everything i have read it seems Haswell runs cooler when idle but a fair amount hotter when under load.I borrowed this from another web site, they used the same heatsink for each test if it matters (NZXT Havik 140 cooler).

Thanks for the info...note, it's always good to site the source and/or provide the link. I have to ask, if the CPU is "100% utilized" and running at 1.021V in one test and then there is a "maximum load" test where the CPU voltage goes up to 1.116V...wtf is going on? Sorta implies 100% isn't 100% or that the Lin-AVX test artificially pops up the core voltage...

Support for the attached Quick Sync transcoding engine is also starting to expand, though not fast enough for our liking. The addition of HandBrake, a free, open source encoding application, to its ranks makes the feature is more accessible but it still works best on the limited selection of "properly" supported commercial software, e.g. MediaEspresso.

The problem with MediaEspresso is (at least the last time I checked) that you can't run it from a batch file/command line.

My SageTV server can kick off a process when a TV show has finished recording that can transcode the MPEG-2 content to H.264, but in order to do this you need something that has a CLI. Luckily Handbrake comes with a CLI so it works but for a while there were only a couple of applications that supported QuickSync and neither of them were useful in this instance. Converting to H.264 reduces file size and makes the file iOS friendly.

so far the only discussion I've seen of thermal performance at stock speeds is on Legit Reviews, which found that the i7-4770K maxed out at a whopping 82 degrees C when using the stock cooler.

According to this review at Muropaketti, stock cooler and default clock 4770k reaches 100C in a few minutes in Prime95 and starts to throttle to keep temps at 100C. So it's totally unusable with Intel cooler.

I think any 14cm tower cooler with a slow spinning 14cm fan is good enough for 4770k. Currently I'm using old Prolimatech Armageddon with 14cm 600rpm Fractal silent series fan, and getting max 83C prime95 temp at 4300MHz, +0.001V offset.

Retail version runs much hotter than engineering samples of 4770k. Don't trust any early reviews based on engineering samples, those are not valid reviews. Muropaketti's and likely also spcr review are based on retail version.

Thanks for the OC and UV temp measurements! 0.14V offset is ~24% power delta...call it 20W less with Prime95. The irony here is your undervolted 4770K running at maybe 60W is about as efficient at removing heat as the 130W Nehalem used in SPCR's Armageddon review with a 680rpm 14cm Slipsteam fan. Great job, Intel.

...but the flip side is that if you're running a silent rig, you're most likely using a big powerful cooler with a fan that's set to keep the CPU temp below a certain temp (let's say silent below 60, and always keep it below 70C). This is pretty easy with most motherboard fan controllers these days, so the question of longevity seems moot -- you'll upgrade to a new platform long before you have a chance to burn out the CPU.

Well, what I had planned for my next build was to use a SilverStone Fortress FT02 case, run the three 180mm intake fans on low speed, and have the case fans as the only fans in the system - using a Thermalright Macho heatsink for the CPU, and an Arctic Accelero S1 Plus for the video card. Ideally, they should get enough airflow from the large fans at the bottom to keep cool. At least that was my thinking with Ivy Bridge. But with Haswell, this is probably no longer feasible. (I'm looking at mid-range Xeon processors - the E3-1230 v2 and v3.) Building a workstation like this would represent a large investment for me, and I'd want it to last 5 to 7 years - and Haswell runs so hot that I have my doubts about that. I'd prefer not to see load temperatures above 70 degrees.

There are no Haswell Xeons with a TDP lower than 80W. The desktop processors don't support ECC. (Some of the lower-end parts might, as they did with Ivy Bridge, but the only way to get quad core and ECC is with a Xeon.)

I'd be surprised if that was indeed the case.Intel's rating are obviously not model-specific. Relying on them is foolishness. The slowest CPU of the same type with a given rating is sure to consume less (if there's more than one CPU with that rating). Even with the fastest CPU, you'd likely never come close the rating without overclocking.

If you want a Xeon quad but would be willing to settle for one of slow models with a lower TDP rating, simply get the cheapest Xeon quad and underclock it if your tests show that it's needed in your build. Either way, you'll be fine.Underclocking is a perfectly reliable way of keeping a CPU cool. It's usually not needed but if you insist on an unusual cooling system, it might be prudent to underclock a bit.

Maybe you could also turn off HT.

edit: Wikipedia says there's a few slow Xeon quads with a low TDP rating. I'm not saying they're worth buying above the cheapest model but if WP is accurate and if you obsess about ratings for some reason...

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